On July 17, The Minnesota Department of Transportation and Saint Paul mayor Chris Coleman apologized for bulldozing the Rondo neighborhood of Saint Paul to build Interstate 94. Beginning in 1958, the freeway destroyed nearly a thousand homes and businesses and it displaced thousands of people at the core of a predominantly African American neighborhood. It […]
I’m a huge fan of Judd Apatow – from his TV show Freaks and Geeks to films like 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up. I’m at least as big of a fan of Amy Schumer’s comedy. So I was excited beyond measure to see that they were teaming up to create Trainwreck. The movie, which did […]
Monte Castleman challenges the belief that building more roads can solve congestion. Data from the Texas A&M Transportation Institute shows a complex relationship between freeway lane miles and congestion, influenced by factors like vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and economic conditions.
The Twin Cities pizza chain Davanni’s is celebrating its 40th birthday with a facelift. It wants to be young again and recapture its original glory as the neighborhood pizza joint. In a recent article, the Star Tribune reported that many young millennials do not associate Davanni’s with their local neighborhood businesses, but rather think of it as a chain. And I know why. The […]
With the coming of LED technology, now is a good time to take a look at Mn/DOT’s lighting of the freeways and highways of the metro. Types of Conventional Luminaires Traditionally standard luminaires on the freeways have been a “semi-cutoff” design. Fixture selection is the balancing act, semi-cutoff fixtures throw light to the sides and […]
We’re coming to the close of the 2015 legislative session in Minnesota, and that means some scrambling to get comprehensive bills passed. The DFL and GOP plans couldn’t be further apart in how they plan to fund roads, but at least they agree on the amount we should spend. Bipartisanship! There’s a (perhaps growing) minority […]
Much has been written over the past year on the upcoming reconstruction of the Hennepin/Lyndale commons area just outside downtown Minneapolis, to be done later this year. Today’s Map of the Day looks back at the proposal for I-94 in the commons area from 1957. It comes from the study report “Freeways in Minnneapolis” conducted […]
In the run-up to construction of the Green Line between Minneapolis and Saint Paul, neighborhood activists spent a huge amount of effort to get three extra stations included on the route at Hamline Avenue, Victoria Street, and Western Avenue. These extra stations cut the distance between stations in half on that section, from one mile […]
Last Wednesday (February 4) I attended a public presentation by Ramsey County engineers for a proposed redesign of the Randolph and Lexington Avenue intersection. They are proposing to spend a million and a half dollars to purchase four properties on the northeast corner of the intersection and bulldoze them to make space for a dedicated […]
In my work as a librarian, I have the extreme pleasure to curate my branch’s local history collection. Since I took up that charge, Mary Losure’s Our Way or the Highway: Inside the Minnehaha Free State (U of M Press, 2002) has been staring me down, begging me to pluck it off the shelf and check […]